And then she fainted, and sank down in the bushes.
Dannie's hands relaxed a little, he lifted the weight of Jimmy's
body by his throat, and set him on his feet. "I'll give ye juist
ane chance," he said. "~Is that the truth?"
Jimmy's awful eyes were bulging from his head, his hands were
clawing at Dannie's on his throat, and his swollen lips repeated it
over and over as breath came, "It's a lie! It's a lie!"
"I think so myself," said Dannie. "Ye never would have dared. Ye'd
have known that I'd find out some day, and on that day, I'd kill ye
as I would a copperhead."
"A lie!" panted Jimmy.
"Then ~why did ye tell it?" And Dannie's fingers threatened to
renew their grip.
"I thought if I could make you strike back," gasped Jimmy, "my
hittin' you wouldn't same so bad."
Then Dannie's hands relaxed. "Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy!" he cried. "Was
there ever any other mon like ye?"
Then he remembered the cause of their trouble.
"But, I'm everlastingly damned," Dannie went on, "if I'll gi'e up
the Black Bass to ye, unless it's on your line. Get yourself up
there on your bank!"
The shove he gave Jimmy almost upset him, and Jimmy waded back, and
as he climbed the bank, Dannie was behind him. After him he dragged
a tangled mass of lines and poles, and at the last up the bank, and
on the grass, two big fish; one, the great Black Bass of Horseshoe
Bend; and the other nearly as large, a channel catfish;
undoubtedly, one of those which had escaped into the Wabash in an
overflow of the Celina reservoir that spring.
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